OpenGL News Archives

“I Have No Tomatoes” features solid game play with beautiful OpenGL API driven isometric 3d graphics. It is free and open source for Linux and Windows. Now, the question is, what to do when you have to waste ten minutes? The answer is, of course: squish as many tomatoes as you can! This game is just for that, but it is also a bit more. You may find it not to be complete waste of time after all…

gDEBugger is a debugger for analyzing and optimizing performance of OpenGL API-based applications. It traces application activity on top of the OpenGL API, providing application behavior information to find bugs and to optimize application performance. It supplies data such as OpenGL calls log, OpenGL state variables values and graphic system information and displays it in a small window that does not block the application graphic view. The program can be customized with definition of the menu sets, data and views appropriate for each debugging task. For Win 2000/XP.

ATI introduced the Mobility Radeon 9800 for laptops based on the same core technology that powers ATI’s Radeon X800 line. It features eight pixel pipelines, a 256-bit wide memory interface and support for ATI’s Smartshader HD and 3Dc, and full support for OpenGL 1.5 and the OpenGL Shading Language, as well as OpenGL 2.0.

GETIC 3D is an interactive 3D editor for interior as well exterior scenes using OpenGL API rendering. Multiple CSG’s based on BSP trees makes possible complex model construction as well extreme terrain carving. It supports hidden surface removal, ready to run BSP trees with light maps, portals with Possible View Sets, and skyboxes with complex shapes layers and associated animations. It includes full set of demo C++ source code and tutorials.

Stratagus (formerly FreeCraft) is a free cross-platform real-time strategy gaming engine. It is configurable and includes support for playing over the internet/LAN, or playing a computer opponent. The latest v2.1 adds initial OpenGL API support to move it into 3D. The game engine was recently described on Linux Dev Center.

Stella is a multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator. The new v1.4 for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows adds OpenGL API rendering and SDL support, a refined game GUI, and enhanced input support. There is also a KDE front end.

In the spirit of GLTrace comes GLSurveyor, a new interceptor library providing run-time instrumentation of OpenGL API usage for windows applications. When running your application with the GLSurveyor dll, you can capture log files of all OpenGL API method invocations (continuous or single frame snapshots), see a frame rate counter displayed over the application 3D window, and control the behavior of many aspects of your applications use of the OpenGL. The free version everything a typical developer would ever need in a diagnostic library, but the commercial version allows even more robust instrumentation, such as logging OpenGL state changes as each method is invoked, etc.

The 3D Touch Developer Challenge is intended to create commercially-oriented applications that take advantage of the OpenHaptic toolkit and PHANTOM Omni haptic device, which add the dimension of touch and true 3D navigation to a wide variety of OpenGL API applications, from design to games and entertainment to simulation and visualization. The OpenHaptics toolkit is patterned after the OpenGL API, making it familiar to graphics programmers and facilitating integration with new or existing OpenGL applications. The competition will begin on August 9, 2004 and will conclude with the submission of applications on December 31, 2004. Winners will be chosen by a panel of industry experts and will be announced in early 2005. A total of $22,500 in prize money will be awarded.

Falanx Microsystems new Mali100 silicon IP core supports OpenGL ES hardware acceleration as well as 2D graphics and video encoding/decoding capabilities. The Mali graphics product line is scalable, targeting different price, performance and power consumption levels - making it a good match for mobile gaming enabled devices from the mid-range to the high-end of the market. The Mali100 is now undergoing the OpenGL ES Conformance testing and approval process . Falanx willl be showing their solution at SIGGRAPH booth #2134.

When 3D models are stored as object surface meshes in a list of points and triangles, information about the object shape, orientation, width, height, depth, symmetries and redundancies is lost. This prevent post-design optimization and modification. The MORE SDK (Mesh Object Recognition Engine) is an OpenGL API-accelerated software component which recovers geometric information from 3D object surface meshes. It can be integrated into Windows 3D applications.

MathInt makes the full OpenGL API instruction set available to Mathematica 5.0. Mathematica comunicates with MathInt using shared memory (when both application are running on the same computer) or through TCP/IP protocol. The software makes it possible for a non-programmer tp use OpenGL from within Mathematica.